Dad and the making of me

mental pictures may not exist, but he made me a writer

I grew up at my father’s side. I wasn’t raised by my dad; I wasn’t reared by anyone. I’m more the kid that aged up absorbing nurturing and knowledge wherever I could find it. My older sister, my high school best friend/later husband, and Dad.

I grew up next to Dad. I measured my height by him, and so much of my childhood treasured learnings were in proximity to him. The distance from Dad is a feature I’ve only thought about recently. He was always in the camera frame but never ended up in the picture. He gave me my writers’ eye.

I guess I’m a polymath…(geek is my preferred term)—one of those people that knows a lot about a lot of things…not because I’m better educated or read…because of Dad. I can pull a weird fact out of my hip pocket about planes, trains or cars, Canadian political or southern Ontario history, as quick as I can recount a memory from yesterday. Thanks, Dad.

He was passionate about his interests: flying, aircraft, local railroad history, cars from the 1940’s through 1960’s, the printing trade, colour, and stories. He was a storyteller; and most of all, a listener and procurer of stories. He could retell any story that had ever been shared with him. Stories were gold, gifts, treasures to him. I watched him savour the way someone would share a story with him. He was being endowed with their tale. I feel that too.

My Dad had a farm family upbringing. He went to a one room country school until grade 8, and then to the high school in town where he did a couple of years until the fields needed him. His older brothers went into service during WW II and the younger kids were needed at home. School was secondary. The farm was primary.

I was the third child, less wanted than the other two, more of a hindrance than anything to my mother, so I was dad’s job. “Take her with you,” was the order I heard barked around the house more than any other.

The ways of my father became my own.

I spent after school hours with Dad, summer weeks working in his print shop, watching him ink his Heidelberg press to print maps and books. I rode “shotgun” in his station wagon, or little two seater trucks to see customers at big city companies, or small town lakefront resorts. I wrapped his print jobs in kraft paper, and learned everything about mixing ink colours according to Pantone charts. He always had time to talk. (He was always in shit for being late getting home.)

I wrote and read while I waited for Dad. As a printer’s kid I had an unlimited supply of paper. I studied the surroundings from driveways and parking lots. I watched people’s faces as they talked, my Dad’s body language as he relaxed into conversation. I learned about setting, scene, and character … I fell in love with the views of the world that my writing looks at now.

The years I was “your father’s problem” made me who I am.

I am still obsessed with maps…especially the stories about ancient maps being created, forged, stolen and recovered. I worked “thar be dragons” into my Loving Large memoir, extending the mystery of the far oceans to the world of rare disease parenting. I am a tetrochromat. I see more colours than other people. I discern shades of colour that other people simply don’t see. I don’t want to find out if I learned this or it is a medical diagnosis, because…Dad. (Anyone want to know how the Pantone colour keys were created…look that one up!) I am a bookbuilder and publisher, a publishing strategist. I take people’s true stories and guide them to the world. I write memoir. I read and am possessed by the genre.

All…Dad.

Time for a story…recently I moved and indulged myself in a sorting and purging that has become the opening for the book I’m writing now. I found things I’ve kept, and realized that the why of keeping them was at the heart of my next book. I found a manilla folder with something unintelligible in Dad’s writing on the front. Inside was a manuscript typed on onion skin paper (I hate that) edited by my father. Edited by my very well read father who had a couple of years of high school formal education. I leafed through that book like my father was whispering to me from the pages. He went on to publish that book.

“Keep doing what you’re doing. You were born for this.”

Happy Father’s Day to every one who considers themselves a guide, carer or nurturer.